


Heart Shaped Smiles From A Heartbroken Man

by distressed_bucky



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Depression, No Plot/Plotless, References to Depression, The relationship isn't the main focus, Viktor likes to forget, Yeah this isn't very encouraging, but it is mentioned, but it is what it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 09:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13407948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distressed_bucky/pseuds/distressed_bucky
Summary: Viktor is kind of a sad guy.





	Heart Shaped Smiles From A Heartbroken Man

Viktors sadness came in different ways. Some of them simple, some not.

His sadness came in long periods of not showering. Staying in the same clothes for days, days that sometimes bled into weeks. Laying in bed, sitting in his own filth and hating himself for it. Hating himself for being so disgusting, for allowing himself to get to such a pathetic state. Running cold, pale fingers through his hair and grimacing at the greasiness of it, thinking back to the reason he cut his once lengthy hair. For this very reason. It was just another responsibility, another outlet for his sadness to shine through.

He remembers the way his silver strands would knot themselves, the way the hair near his scalp would matt up, creating heavily tangled clumps of friz. How thinking about using his brush made him tired, the process of detangling his hair seemed so overwhelming all the time. Too much. It was just too much. Washing it and keeping up with it and making sure it was clean.

So Viktor cut it.

He took a pair of scissors and chopped it off. He knelt on the bathroom floor for days; surrounded by strings of dull grey. But he couldn't bring himself to regret it, it had to be done. He just couldn't keep up with it, so away the hair he took so much pride in went.

It didn't fix his issue. Viktor still sat in bed in the middle of the day and cursed himself for not being able to even manage decent hygiene. He'd stay dirty until he could coax himself out of bed and into the shower. He was lucky if he could do that once a week.

At least once a week, Viktor would stand in the shower for hours. He'd stay until his fingers and toes were beyond pruned and the water ran frigid, even then he wouldn't leave. Often times, without realizing it, he would slide down the shower wall and hug his knees to his chest, slowly rocking back and forth.

Viktor liked to pretend that the water droplets running down his face were tears. He liked to pretend like he was actually having release, like he was actually alright. Or at least getting there.

That was another way.

His sadness came in pretending. Smiling when he wasn't at his best and laughing to get rid of the choked feeling in his throat. Being loud and disruptive to distract others, as well as himself, from his inner turmoil. Fluttering his falsely lit eyes, always silently praying that no one saw the ugly truth buried behind them.

Sometimes he found himself praying out loud.

Viktor was never one to be religious, but he was one to be desperate.

When people felt hopeless they turned to God, a higher power that was advertised as an automatic source of relief. A being that could not be seen or touched, something that could never be proven to be real. A being so mighty that it could affect the lives of many all at once.

Yeah, people had to be pretty hopeless to turn to something like that. Viktor had to be pretty hopeless to turn to something like that. He knew better though. He new that even if something was not physical that it could still be real.

Because the thorny vines that wrapped themselves around his heart were not physical. The cotton that filled his throat was not physical. The spears lodged in his chest were not physical. The veil of false feelings he draped himself in everyday was not physical.

But they were _real_. And if things as terrible as those were real, why couldn't something as sweet as the idea of God be?

It's because it wasn't. God was nothing but an idea, a thought that would never survive amongst the other intrusive ones that filled Viktor's head.

Too good to be true. If someone as glorious as God existed why would they be so cruel? Why would they allow him to live his life behind a facade? Why would they help everyone except Viktor?

No. God was not real.

But fate was.

It was, afterall, fate that brought him to his Yuuri.

It was fate that led them to cross paths. Fate led him to find his new inspiration for skating, new inspiration for _living_.

There goes another.

His sadness came in skating. Every emotion across the board shined through when he skated, but sadness was the star. If Viktor couldn't outrun his problems then he'd dance around them, he was good at that. His fancy footwork would carry him to relief and lay him down on a bed of temporary comfort. But that relief came after he was finished.

Time on the ice wasn't time away from the infectious darkness that plagued him, it was time _meant_ for it, because on the ice he was confined. Closed in and trapped.

Those few minutes of performance time felt like and eternity; a lifetime he wishes he'd stop breathing in. Those moments were small pieces of a forever he didn't want to know about, every step sequence came form a place of misery, and every leap was an attempt at escaping the demons that pulled him down. Their hands were the gravity that latched on the his skates and yanked him right back on to the cold and unforgiving ice. The bruises on his feet were from them. Those demons were the ones that blessed him with the gift of skating only to trap him in an endless loop of torture.

_"We call everything on the ice **love**." _

Skating was his life. Without life on the ice, there was no life at all.

Viktor Nikiforov was nothing without blades on his shoes and medals around his neck.

_Nothing_.

That realization was one of the many contributers to his unhealthy state of mind. So he opted out and aimed to forget.

Another.

His sadness came in forgetting. It started with tossing out thoughts, the negative ones that made him shut his eyes and caused a spike in his heart rate. That led to unintentionally erasing entire days, hours and hours completely forgotten from his memory. Places he's gone to and things he's done, gone. Conversations he's had with people, things he's said.

Promises he's made.

Yuri Plisetsky.

He was a talented young boy. Lots of determination, fear of failure is what drove him, what motivated him. He reminded Viktor of himself. He reminded him of Russia. His home, the holy grounds where everything had started for him. The place where he found himself, the place where he lost himself.

The place Viktor didn't want to remember. So he tried to forget it and everything that reminded him of it. His promise to Yuri was the only thing that kept him tied to Russia, and as soon as it was out of the way, he fled. Because that's essentially what he was doing, he was running away. Running away to Japan.

Running away to his love. To Yuuri Katsuki, the man he knew he would love before he actually loved him.

Ah, there it is. One of the strongest outlets.

His sadness came in loving. Falling in love, being in love. Viktor loved everything and he did it so unapologetically. So beautifully. His love was like rain, relentless and heavy. It fell upon everyone and left them drenched. He hoped Yuuri felt like that, drenched in love.

His insecure and anxious Yuuri. The man that was always on the brink of another mental breakdown, the man that had absolutely no business feeling the way he did. He had no business feeling the way Viktor felt. He wasn't supposed to, he didn't deserve it.

No one deserved it.

It was disappointing to know that one of the only things Viktor could provide came from a place of such despair. The most intense love came from pain, and his love was heart stopping. His _sadness_ was heart stopping.

His sadness came in everything he did, everything he was. He fell prey to it and couldn't help but let it consume him.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Wattpad ItsTheLanding
> 
> This is very obviously not edited. Forgive me.
> 
> Enjoy...?
> 
> -k


End file.
